


father (he is screaming and crying for help)

by jordantodd



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Angst, Daddy Issues, Gen, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Songfic, Suicidal Thoughts/Ideation? Sorta, i still don’t know how tagging works
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-14
Updated: 2020-07-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:55:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25254997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jordantodd/pseuds/jordantodd
Summary: i have this dream that i am hitting my dad with a baseball bat
Comments: 3
Kudos: 59





	father (he is screaming and crying for help)

**Author's Note:**

> beta reading is for fucking nerds

Penelope’s big on dreams. Every morning, when Spencer steps through the doorway into her little office crammed wall to wall with posters and figurines and piles of comics slotted between her monitors for easy access, she has something new. 

Last week it was something about a raunchy picnic with some heartthrob actor, one of the Chrises, and yesterday it was about her old highschool, but how everyone’d been replaced by octopi.

Spencer says he doesn’t dream. It’s both a bald-faced lie and factually wrong. He knows very well, in fact, that everyone dreams, multiple times each night. He is no exception. It’s just that some people tend to remember their dreams more, whilst others forget as soon as they wake up. 

The thing is, he dreams. A lot. 

  
  


_I have this dream that I am hitting my dad with a baseball bat_

_And he is screaming and crying for help_

  
  


Penelope believes dreams can be interpreted. Deciphered, picked apart to reach some conclusion about your current life, your hopes and dreams and fears, the inner workings of your mind that sit so far in your subconscious you don’t even realise you feel that way. 

He wonders what his dreams are really about. On the surface, it’s painfully obvious - everyone knows Spencer Reid has daddy issues. But he wonders if there’s more to decipher in his dreams than just the fact he hates his dad. 

He wonders if the ever-changing scenery - restaurants, elevators, his childhood bedroom - mean anything. He wonders if the feeling of the baseball bat beneath his hands means anything, or maybe the colour of his sweater. If the way that, when the blood begins to pour and splatter - across the floor and walls and his own skin - it’s always a different colour, means something. Blue, orange, black. 

  
  


_And maybe halfway through it has more to do with me killing him_

_Than it ever did protecting myself_

Most nights, he can sort of tell it’s coming. He slips under the covers or dozes off on the couch, and it hits him. 

William Reid will be there. That same greying hair, combed back. That same frail and lanky frame shrouded in his Sunday Church clothes, a shabby pinstripe suit with elbow patches and unwavering scowl. He’ll look just as he did the day he left, never ageing a day. And neither will Spencer - he’ll be stuck, trapped in the body of 12-year-old him with those stupid square glasses and those oversized, worn jumpers because normal stores didn’t make clothes for kids as scrawny as him, let alone the thrift stores he’d have to buy his clothes from. 

There’ll be a beat, a moment for Spencer to come to his senses and realise what’s happening. And then the yelling will start. It never makes any sense, just an unintelligible onslaught of gibberish, something that’s got him pissed. The vein in his forehead‘ll start to bulge, and his face will turn a shade of crimson, voice growing and growing and growing like a rolling thunder but the lightning never ever comes. 

It’ll be an infinite crescendo of screaming that grows louder and angrier with each passing moment. 

It’s then that he’ll fall back, tripping over air. His glasses will go flying, and his hands’ll reach out to fumble across the ground. Some nights he’ll find his glasses first, but most nights it’s the same; thin, bony fingers wrap around the wooden handle of a baseball bat. He’ll grip it tight, scrambling to stand,

and then he’ll swing. 

The thing is, Spencer’s killed people before. It’s sort of expected with the job - sometimes Unsubs make an unexpected run for it. Sometimes you can’t save a victim in time. It sucks, and he doesn’t know if he can ever fully forgive himself for it, but it’s happened. 

He’s never wanted to do it. It’s always a last resort, of course. From a professional standpoint, you want to avoid the blood and the lawsuits and the paperwork and instead see this guy rotting in a cell. From a moral standpoint, Spencer knows that as soon as he presses that trigger, he’s just as bad as the guy at the end of the barrel. 

Except when it comes to that one moment, when the baseball bat collides with his father’s face. There’ll be a sickening crunch, a tooth or two go flying alongside a fountain of blood. No matter how many firearms exams he’d failed, Spencer never misses his shot here. 

He could stop. Keep his father at bay, forcing the ever-encroaching tide back. But he never does, he never can, landing another blow, and then another, and then another. 

Soon, his father’ll be collapsed on the non-descript floor. Curled up, shuddering and sobbing and gasping for air between pleas for mercy, or for someone to help him. That _how could you do this to me? Your father?_

_And all he’ll want to scream is How could I? How could I? Is this not repayment, me returning the favour?_ He wants to scream that he’d gone through worse, he’d gone through hell. How he was just a kid when it all happened, if a grown man couldn’t handle it then how the fuck was he supposed to?

  
  


_And I believe that yeah, dad, maybe no one is perfect_

_But I believe that you are pushing your luck_

By no means was William Reid a good person. Despite his praises from his peers, despite the carefully poses family photos, and despite the fact he’d attended church every Sunday morning since 1965. He was not a good person.

Spencer knew this well. On a deep level, he knew that nothing could clear his father’s name, absolve him of all sin. After all was said and done, the water still would never run clear for him and his mother, and the bruises would still stain his skin. No amount of praying could undo that. 

He just hoped that the big guy up top, whoever he was, would know that Wiliam Reid was a lying scumbag who’d reserved his seat in hell the moment he’d first decided to lay his hands on Spencer and Diana. 

_It just sucks it played out like this_

_A terrible movie_

_You can tell none of the actors even give a fuck_

When the cases end and Spencer’s sat there watching the aftermath of it all, he starts to wonder if this is really all there is to life. Shitty people doing shitty things, and him just having to clean up the fallout. It all feels somewhat scripted, surreal, like there’s something waiting for him out there but he’s too blinded by set lights and cameras to see it. 

And then he wonders why whoever put him there did that to him. Gave him a father that tortured him, beat him black and blue and left bruises that didn’t even disappear when he did. Gave him a mother who, as deeply as he loved her, was too sick to take care of him in any degree beyond the odd bedtime story. He wonders why, if God is as real and as powerful and as loving as his father made him out to be, why did he have to go through that?

He knows that through adversity, you grow. You learn and you change and you become better and stronger. The cracks heal stronger than before. But he also knows that he was just a kid, and no kid should have to or could handle that. What made God think he could?

_I hope I fall asleep at the wheel and crash my car_

Some days, when the case is particularly rough or the night is particularly long, driving is difficult. He blinks, and for a brief second he sees himself — the car colliding with a tree, or another, his corpse mangled and lifeless in the front seat. His father’s in the backseat. 

He despises the amount of control his father holds over him still. It’s been 13 years, over half his life. He hates how the scars never quite fade, how when he’s sick Garcia caresses his cheek with a doting touch that feels too gentle, so wrong against battered skin. How he flinches every time Derek comes up behind him with a pat on the shoulder - it’s well-intentioned, he knows, and the reaction is barely noticeable. But it’s there and he notices. 

_I'll do the pushups_

_I'll wear the makeup_

_I'll do whatever he wants all night_

Spencer was 25. An adult, three years of work at the BAU and multiple doctorates under his belt. He’d not seen his dad for thirteen whole years. 

And yet, every night, he can’t but help wish that he’d fought back. 


End file.
